The quality of our daily interactions with work colleagues determines how fast and how well we communicate, collaborate, and learn together to achieve successful outcomes. There is a need for leaders and team members to connect well and be comfortable to seek assistance, confident to question current practices and share lessons learnt from successes and failures. With little time and resources, how can organisations build the capability of leaders and teams to rapidly form strong, supportive work relationships and psychological safety that are the foundations for collaboration?

In this session, Marcia Ryan shares a case study of how a team in the insurance industry managed to collaborate and achieve successful outcomes during a period of business change that created an environment of uncertainty. How did the leader shift the mindset of the team from self-protection to sustain collaboration? How did the team create a safe climate to support each other and continue to collaborate and perform well during this challenging time? Learn how this was implemented, the actions the leader and team members took to rapidly cultivate collaborative behaviours into their daily work interactions and the positive outcomes this led to.

Outline/Structure of the Talk

Situation & Context - Transformational change and uncertainty makes it challenging to demonstrate collaborative behaviours. We need to collaborate to work well together with agility and remain resilient

Why it matters - The business case for high performing teams - psychological safety and high-quality work relationships

What is the solution? - Rapidly build high-quality connections and create psychological safety in work teams

How to do this? Case Study: Insurance industry team

The situation/context

The approach

The implementation - Leader and team activities

The outcomes - personal and professional business outcomes

Lessons learnt

Embed and sustainability tactics

Takeaway tool

Learning Outcome

At the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

identify inhibitors of collaboration during volatile business climate

understand what is psychological safety and high-quality connections and the impact they have on collaboration, business performance and resilience

recognise how to implement a collaboration solution using a case study sample

Identify the four key skills to build high-quality connections and rapidly cultivate collaborative team behaviours

Target Audience

Leaders, Change enablers, Relationship builders, Positive Leaders

Prerequisites for Attendees

None - the session will briefly provide the context and concept the case study implementation is based upon (high-quality connections and Psychological Safety for fostering positive working relationships.)